Annette Liska

Visual DesignFor over a decade, Annette has designed elegant and visually intelligent interfaces for applications and emerging technologies, serving as the chief designer for products in the medical, software, financial, engineering, education, and travel industries.

Her personal and professional work investigates the impact of what we see on how we think, feel, move, and relate with others. She advocates for visual languages that communicate accurate and efficient functionality, without sacrificing form or emotional engagement. Whether brainstorming new products or refining existing experiences, she takes visual concepts through a creative, iterative process until the clearest picture emerges and the design truly benefits the user.

Leader in Medical Technology DesignAnnette excels in the design of next-generation medical devices, covering a variety of visual and UX research projects, including multi-touch interfaces before their commercial availability. Her work with medical providers helps her understand how beautiful, intuitive technology is essential to delivering quality health care, making critical and urgent treatment decisions, and supporting engagement with patients on the sensitive topic of illness.

Usability ResearchUser experience methodologies and behavioral research inform Annette's focus on how technology improves or limits our interactions. She spends time observing behavior, not just talking about it, and knows her best designs benefit from collaboration and feedback, no matter how humbling. Her field research and analysis covers many environments and devices, from cancer treatment clinics to brokerage firms, from mobile paramedic touch screens to DIY tax-return interfaces. She has performed usability studies using 6-Sigma techniques and introduced UX design practices on Agile project teams. She endorses open-source software and hardware to better match innovative engineering to users' real-world needs.

She has served as a strategist for numerous clients, recommending plans for extensibility across platforms and devices, releases, upgrades, and short- and long-term technology trending that includes UX design as a component of successful products.

Information ArchitectureAnnette sees the organization of and access to abundant data as a fundamental challenge in technology design. Starting with trusted pencil and paper and moving to digital prototyping, she creates a story with use cases and applies them to wire frames, where logical and delightful content create a structure for the eventual look and feel. When information overwhelms, she designs data-visualization solutions to distill stressful amounts of statistics into interactive decision-making tools that reduce mental load and ease the users' ability to process and enjoy information.

Instructional DesignDigitally mediated education must inspire a user to learn and apply new skills without a teacher in person, and Annette uses story-telling techniques and knowledge retention exercises to create instructions that encourage deeper expertise. Designs are refined with usability studies to ensure instructions are clear, memorable, progressive, and gracious.

EducationAnnette earned an MFA in Drawing and Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a BA in English Literature while at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Nottingham (UK).